Black widow venom and silk genes sequenced

Black widow spiders are one of the deadliest arachnids on Earth.
Infamous for their cruel mating practices, black widows create a
deadly toxin that can knock out or kill humans and produce a silk
that rivals the strength of steel.

Now new research has shed further light on the black widow genes
that produce silk and venom in the spiders, laying the foundation
for further work on spider-inspired medicines and materials.

By using novel gene sequencing techniques, a team of US
scientists were able to increase the number of known genes involved
in silk and venom production 60-fold.

"We went from less than ten known proteins [for silk] to
over 600 candidates. We're talking about a 60-fold increase in
knowledge," Nadia Ayoub of Washington and Lee University told
Wired.co.uk.

The research, published in two papers in the open-access journal
BMC Genomics, sequenced genes in the black widow's silk
and venom glands, and the cephalothorax, which includes the head of
the spider.

One of the team's findings hint towards the origins of the black
widow's powerful venom. Latrotoxin is a
powerful neurotoxin that paralyses and potentially kills its
victims by forcing the firing of neurons. It is a
vertebrate-specific toxin with an
unclear evolutionary history.

"Our research doesn't necessarily answer that question [of its
origins]," admits Ayoub. "But it does show that there are many more
proteins in that family where that protein-specific venom is. The
more proteins that are in the family the more opportunity there is
to diversify the targets of those proteins."

In other words, the discovery of many proteins in the spider's
venom glands suggests that there is greater leeway for mutations
that could have resulted in the development of a
vertebrate-specific toxin.

The work, which involved scientists from Washington and Lee
University, University of Massachusetts and University of
California, could also help the development of synthetic spider
silk.